Persistence of Vision by César Díaz
The leathery eyelid closes over his gaze and burns the image. He won’t see darkness entirely, but a yellowing bled into blue—and the red of an orb. A voice—“Help me, I can’t do it all by myself.” A flash—the eyelid opens: the orb remains, an afterimage, the voice, an afterthought. When she said to him, “You’re no help. I’ll find someone else.” He said to her, “I’m no bore. That’s how I am.” He told himself, Be quiet. That’s not what I want to hear. Still, when he closed his eyes again, he saw more than veins and capillaries flowing through the void between his eye and the world. He saw her walking away—beyond him, set adrift. In that instance he heard others saying—you let her go, for what? He had no reason; he did so because he could, because he possessed a power to do so. Who will blame him, if, by this might, he dwells upon and validates his own ego, on the glistered eye of yearning admirers and the excitement found in the possibility of sex?
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César Díaz lives in Austin, Texas, and is working on his first book.
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Micrograffiti is a project edited by Stacey Swann. The writers were asked to respond with fiction to Ben Walters’ photographs of the South London graffiti tunnel. Click here to read more >>
The Owls 